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Smoke & Fiction

boomkat: ...Pop Negatif Wastad’s eponymous EP from 1989, including all of their self penned songs. This is the first release in a series of reissues from the height of the 80’s & 90’s Welsh music scene."Hailing from mid Wales, Pop Negatif Wastad emerged in the late 80’s as the sole collaboration between Esyllt Anwyl and Gareth Potter. Esyllt cut her teeth in the exceptionally bent no wave group Crisialau Plastig, while Gareth – an actor on the UK soap opera Eastenders – was in the midst of breaking away from his post-punk group Traddodiad Ofnus to form the mighty hip hop/acid techno outfit Tŷ Gwydr. With their backgrounds in experimental pop and the thumping beat of the nascent rave scene looming in the background, the duo took an unapologetic approach to music making with no regard to formulaic sound, gender roles, or expectation.Esyllt served as the mastermind behind the music (along with Gorwel Owen on production – Rhosneigr’s answer to Martin Hannett) while Gareth balanced the project with his dialed vocal style and ideological approach. They developed an emotionally driven and fearless collection of tunes, a charged version of synth pop that elaborated on their experience within the Welsh scene while combining influences from emergent sounds akin to what you’d hear on The Haçieda dance floor (where rumour has it, their Be Music/ Section 25 invoking track “Iawn” was played). Stabs, arpeggiated synths, harsh percussion, piano house leads, concertina melodies, warped samples, and dubbed out delay were quilted together to the chug of drum machines, creating a genre-bending landscape woven with vocals reminiscent of New Order and Joy Division (with the added bonus of being sung in the Welsh language)."

from the artist's bandcamp: ...7-track debut solo LP by Michael Zodorozny of Crash Course in Science // vinyl 300 copies, download & streamingOther Side is the first solo album of Michael Zodorozny, New York post-punk icon and founding member of Crash Course in Science. The side he shows on the album is a rougher and more personal one.The seven tracks, including a feisty remix by The Hacker, are dark and thrusting with an EBM and industrial feel. Home-made and self-invented instruments complete Michael's specific, extraordinary sound.Other Side was produced by Matia Simovich aka INHALT. Michael himself painted and designed the cover artwork.VIDEOConstant: youtu.be/ef1LJTNI_Ec14th Street Union Square Station: youtu.be/1Ht21vufxjE

Editions Mego: ...Two new tracks from this ongoing project featuring members of Coil, Wire and Tomaga. The flirtation with a head expanding motorik music as hinted at on their debut self-titled double album is given the space requiredto unfold on this new EP. Electric Blanket chugs along with perpetual percussion, blankets of feedback and state of the art electronics all embedded with a spectral melody that encircles proceedings as all sonic proceedings veer out further into more mystical ambient planes. On the flip Nice Setting places a strange short spoken narrative at the centre of a shifting sonic landscape of skittering electronic debris and a deep shifting sea of sound. A vibraphone holds proceedings together before once again we head out into the glorious cosmic ether. UUUU are an outfit unashamedly embracing the fantastic - audio as a tool for an unlimited imagination.